Allure magazine has partnered with Microsoft Tag for its annual Free Stuff issue this August, allowing readers to use their smartphones to participate in $725,000 worth of beauty product giveaways, which are awarded on a first-come, first-win basis.

In years past, readers could log on to Allure’s website to enter the contests and sign up for text alert reminders. This year, however, the promotion is moving to smartphones.

To take part in the contests, which begin August 2, readers can type gettag.mobi into their mobile browsers to download the Microsoft Tag Reader. Using the app, they can scan the Tag in the magazine or on Allure’s Free Stuff page to register. Users can also opt to get text message alerts 15 minutes before each event occurs and then scan the Tag to enter.

For those unfamiliar with Microsoft Tag, the product is Microsoft’s version of the QR code, a 2-D barcode that can be scanned using a QR reader app to pull up images, video and a range of other interactive features. Although there are a number of QR code readers available in smartphone app stores, Microsoft Tag requires its own reader app.

Of course, I love 2D Barcodes. Microsoft proves that it can swing its weight to get major publishers to use their proprietary Microsoft Tag. Using 2D barcodes for contests is a GREAT application of the technology.

Here’s the long form presentation of the presentation I gave the the Columbus Social Media Club back in 2010. With iOS11 supporting QR codes in the iPhone camera, I thought it might be good to resurrect this as marketers will be looking for information on how to leverage this old/new school tactic of connecting in real life(IRL) to URL landing pages.

Remember when @mrskutcher only had 28,784 followers on Twitter? Neither do I. But that’s the point about Dailybooth.com! It’s like the wild west all over again in that it completely levels the playing field. Everyone starts at 0 followers.

Get Kozy with @Adventuregirl

THIS is your second chance to connect with the people on Twitter you follow who have hundreds of thousands (or millions @MrsKutcher) of followers. If you’re lucky, they’ll have only…say…72 followers on Dailybooth like @Adventuregirl who has 1,494,734 on twitter! Spark a dialogue with your favorite Twitter peeps BEFORE they reach the same number of followers. Who knows, maybe you’ll get a follow back on Twitter and some link love, right @adventuregirl ? (call me < cheesy wink>).

WTH is DailyBooth??!

I first heard of Dailybooth during the TechCrunch Disrupt in March 2010. Back then, I signed up a poked around but didn’t get hooked until recently. Here’s the gist: remember how much fun you used to have jumping in to a photo booth and snapping some goofy shots with your pals/girlfriends? You’d then show off the snaps to your friends or put them in your locker for others to see? Well now imagine doing that with the web as your locker. When Twitter first launched they were educating users to “tell us what you’re doing” when in reality we were using it to tell people what we’re THINKING! Dailybooth, in contrast, is “SHOW us what you’re doing”. But the real fun and audience engagement comes with the replies. You’re not just writing a reply, you are “miming” your reply in a photo response. Following some of these streams can be absolutely addicting and hilarious!!! Making new friends and exploring is easy. Follow the live stream and start connecting with people that seam interesting but don’t be “that creepy person”!!!

Sorry Kiddies, Secret’s Out

Just like in the early years of Facebook, Dailybooth is a really younger demographic. I mean REALLY young. Not sure of the policy is on minimum age, but you almost feel like a perv at first. As a dad of two young daughters some of the provocative poses (though PG-rated) may be a bit awkward and even unsettling. But I felt better after seeing some real celebs more my age and the following they’ve developed and how it really is a GREAT experience and a fantastic way to express your creativity and individuality. So, sorry kids! Here come your parents and aunts and uncles to ruein the party. And up next….<insert horror music and scream> the ADVERTISERS!!

Squeeze Dailybooth into your Social Media Playbook

Advertising! Marketing! That’s why I’m writing about it today. Dailybooth is a hidden gem just like the Twitter in the early days where you can still have the first mover advantage. What makes Dailybooth so interesting is that it’s incredibly quick and easy (you’d be amazed at how I agonize over carefully choosing my 140 characters)! You just sit in front of your web cam and snap away (or upload), type as little as a one-word comment and pick sharing options of Twitter and/or Facebook or what I like to call the photo-mojo. Compared to the other popular social media sites, Dailybooth is pure entertainment and the easiest to create content which means there will be a ton of content and it will be very entertaining and easy to go viral. It really is positioned nicely among the other social media sites (see below).

Get the QR Codes Out

Get people to show you some love using using QR Codes! You can cross promote to other sites like this!

Get em flyin’ your colors

Studies have shown that people LOVE to brag about their latest shopping finds. Get them to snap a photo with your product and post on Dailybooth then reward them with coupons or discounts. Just get the ball rolling with a few simple rules and the crowds take over.

Send them on a Scavenger Hunt

Don’t forget, “boothers” are not tethered to their desktops!

Theres an iPhone app and you can also email photos to your profile. So get them engaged in activities and interacting with your brand at your location or get them to put lampshades on their heads at your events. Set up a Dailybooth BOOTH at the event and let the frenzy begin!

These are just a couple of ideas. So what do you think? Will Dailybooth become as big as Twitter?

Is anyone old enough to remember Merry-Go-Round clothing store? If you are old enough to remember, you’ll probably chuckle when I say it was my first job right after I quit Burger King at the tender age of 16. I LOVED working in retail. You should have seen my skinny tie and bandanna collection! I went on to manage Benetton stores all through college (this is the 80’s folks – United Colors of Benetton, remember?), then later worked for The Limited stores. I STILL LOVE RETAIL! In fact, I can outlast my tween daughters on a day at the mall!

I also LOVE digital. So a couple of years ago, when I first heard about Augmented Reality(AR) apps and saw QR Codes and glyphs in action, my first thought went straight to how they can be used in a retail environment. What is commonplace today in Japan is shaping the vision of the future in the U.S. with great videos showing how the analogue and digital worlds can be integrated into a unified user experience. Great right? Well not exactly.

As I was shopping with my daughters today when we stumbled into The Gap. Much to my surprise I see a QR Code on a display (only 1 in the entire store). I of course was curious and got out my favorite QR reader on my iPhone, NeoReader (try it, it will work from this web page). First of all, the display was on a table that was about 2 feet high. I debated internally if I wanted to get on a knee in the middle of The Gap to scan, but in the end, my curiosity got the best of me. It took a second to register the QR tag on my screen but I finally got the happy “ding” and my browser launched! My excitement was completely squashed when I saw this…

NooooOOoooo…. what a let down and major #fail. So we’re not quite here yet are we? But it did start my wheels turning? What are the killer apps for QR codes in a retail experience?

KILLER APPS

Engage me

It’s easy to go with a simple link to a product page. But what are you going to ask me to do next? Give me social tools to share my adoration for this product. Let me save this in a favorites list that I can refer to later or email to my Aunt Helen as a hint for my birthday. Think and engage!

QR Codes Clicks = Purchase Intent

Don’t use QR codes to show them 5 angles of the product they can hold in their hand. Give them details that will help inform their decision and feel smart about their purchase.

Listen to Your Customer

This is your chance! Your customer clicked on the QR code indicating interest. 100 clicks on product A, but only sold 1 today? Why?? They are holding their mobile device and in the perfect scenario to provide you feedback. Ask one question – “do you like this? yes/no”. Feeling lucky? Ask “why/why not?”! Feed this data back to your buyers. Just imagine the data you could capture if this was a branded app where you know the demographic profile of the respondent! WOW this can be powerful.

Make it Easy

It was interesting to me that I had to think before I scanned! Me, the uber geek was contemplating NOT scanning a QR code. I have to admit, I felt like a dork scanning a QR code and it was only worse that I had to kneel down to do it. Place codes at eye level for signage.

Commit to the QR

Train the staff on what the QR tags are. Give them talking points at two levels for the novice and the expert. This becomes part of your brand experience. You NEVER want to have your associate say “I don’t know” even if it’s NOT a sku.

Cross-Media Optimize the Campaign

Use the QR Code to launch to the video of the TV spot that features the product their holding in their hands and vice versa. Use QR codes on print ads with a call to action the rewards the customer with a promotional offer then list nearby stores based on their location. And if you REALLY want to get crazy think about linking location based systems (LBS) such as Foursquare, Gowalla and even now Facebook Places. Why not have them checkin via QR code?

The QR Opt-in

Email marketing is not dead! Ask for their email address and reward them with an offer that they can redeem in the store at that moment! What do you think the redemption rate of that coupon would be? What was your cost of acquisition and the lifetime ROI of that one simple click??

Beyond the Sign

Think of new places to put QR codes. Put them on the price tag with product specific information. Heck, put them on the LABEL. When that tween goes home after a day at the mall, they invite their friends over for an impromptu fashion show! Empower their friends to scan the tag then snap photos of their friend wearing that item to share. Just imagine them posting their new outfits on DailyBooth.com holding the price tag w/ the QR code. Their friends can instantly scan and engage the exact product with the nearest store location.

Educate Me

Most people will walk by and never notice the squiggly squares. Talk up the codes! Tell your customers about QR codes and why they will enhance their shopping experience. GONE is the day of “can I help you find something?”!

Inform Me

When I was in the dressing room today, I needed a different size shirt. How amazing would it be if I could scan the QR code on the price tag to see if the RIGHT size was even in stock? Make the QR code a customer service tool, NOT just a marketing tool.

Admittedly, QR Codes can be borderline gimmicky. Think gimmick, you’ll get gimmick. But on the other hand if you can think of ways that ENHANCE the brand experience in a very simple way you can bridge the analogue world with the digital to build loyalty, engage, spark dialogue and spread word of mouth.

What do you think? Are there any great application of QR codes you can share?

DIGITAL BRILLIANCE HISTORY LESSON

Now I know what it must have felt like to watch the lunar landing! Watching the twitterverse buzz over the @oldspice’s video replies to tweets and comments from across the web made me feel like I was witnessing (in real-time) an epic paradigm shift and birth of the benchmark for which all ad campaigns will be measured for years to come.

The first seismic shift happened in 1999 during Super Bowl XXXIII with the Victoria’s Secret’s spot promoting their Webcast fashion show. Then in 2001, BMW created a stir with their high quality film shorts featuring world-class directors and in the process building mindshare on the desktop with their branded video player. Even still, these campaigns were more about branding and less about action (and even less about interaction). In 2004 Burger King’s Subservient Chicken was the first campaign to successfully deploy a viral tactic that was launched from just a handful of the ad agency’s staff to grow to 5 million visits in the first 5 days. Dove’s 2006 Campaign for Real Beauty that was elegantly executed and honest and it too created some buzz.

But these campaigns were all BT (before twitter).

Since Twitter meteoric rise, marketers and advertisers have been trying to figure out how to leverage it’s potential. In a world where ad agency’s traditional leadership relies on mass-media to move the needle, this brilliant Wieden+Kennedy Old Spice campaign shook that suits out of their office chairs to face the nemesis – the web and more pointedly social media! Nothing demonstrates this more than comparing AXE’s efforts to Old Spice’s. Let’s face it, this campaign has left AXE looking like your father’s Oldsmobile.

ALMOST PERFECT

In spite of its brilliance I still wanted more!

Mobile

Where’s my mobile app? We want more!! I’d be curious to see how many queries for “Old Spice” were done in the iTunes store! How about an Augmented Reality app the scans a QR tag on either a POP display or Print ad that launches a Old Spice guy video related to the printed piece.

PR

I want to know who @Jsbeals is! I want meet his girlfriend! This is HISTORY!!! Get the mainstream media to write about the power of social media with the angle of interviewing some of the real-people to whom you replied.

POP

Where’s the POP support for the campaign??!!! Gerard makes a great point in his blog post!

Location Based Engagement

How about FourSquare/Gowalla? When I checked-in at Target on FourSquare I was hoping to see an offer to drive my purchase.

Email

Build a subscriber list, get my name and home address and send me something amazing in the mail!

NOT SO PERFECT

It looks as if AXE left the Social Media strategy to the PR firm Edlemen. Which brings up another debate – who should OWN social media? PR, Client, Ad Agency? If nothing else, this campaign has made a compelling case for the ad agency to lead. I believe the answer should be dictated by the client’s situation, resources, and passion for the channel. If you are BP, uh yeah, PR should be manning the social media ship. But certainly in this circumstance, the payoff is HUGE when the ad agency leads. No matter who’s leading, the big lesson is that for a campaign to reach its potential digital/social media must be on equal footing with TV. Amazing things can happen if you do, and if you don’t, well… look for yourself.

OLD SPICE VS. AXE STRATEGY SHOOTOUT

Spokesperson: Old Spice Guy (Actor, Isaiah Mustafa)Old Spice did a great job of humanizing the brand in a way that plays well to social media. You know your talking to a brand, but you feel like the brand is your fiend. There’s the critical ingredient of brand authenticity perfectly mixed with entertainment that you feel compelled to root for Old Spice.

Spokesperson: Jennie Averbrook (Edlemena PR Employee)AXE isn’t driving the voice posts because posts are sparse. And when they appear, they tend to be very promotionally driven. Occasionally, there will be replies to conversations, sometimes even defending the brand. They do a good job of putting a human face in the conversation, but it almost seems like they looked around and said – “Oh, you have a facebook profile? Ok, you are in charge of our client’s brand on Facebook”.

Features

Talk to OS GuyLeave comments to Old Spice in hopes of getting a video message. Hillarious responses. Store Buy Merch including “I’m on a horse” tying back to the TV campaign. I’d like to see the merch go viral too. Perhaps do a deal with Threadless.com – unleash the masses!DownloadsYawn. #fail where’s OS Guy?

Interns

Seems like leftovers from previous campaign. Pointless and diluted the OS Guy experience. #fail It would have been cool if OS guy called out the interns and mobilized them to support this campaign.

Pole Poll

Made me smile but this too seems like an artifact from a previous campaign, diluting the experience for me.

Photos

User generated content complete with buxom blonde (is no place safe….jeez). It would have played better if we were guided with what upload and rewarded with video message.

Videos

Behind the scenes and user generated videos complete w/ spammers. Again, it would be great to see focus on what is being uploaded.

Polls

Witty questions – 20,683 people voted!!

AXE W.A.D.DFacebook app that allows you to report “boring” friends because they suffer from “Women’s Attention Deficit Disorder”. To date 11,777 “WADDS” tagged. This is on-brand as the least-common-denominator humor that would attrac their target audience.Axe Rise TestLink to their microsite where you answer questions on a web cam that that records me without my permission, asks me inocuous questions that are recorded only to be used to be edited into a canned video with sexual innueandos. Ha ha got me. WHERE IS MY DELETE BUTTON!??? I don’t want this on the internet. I’m calling my atty to see if he can find the delete button. #EPICFAIL

AXD Indie Run

Info on their promotion encouraging to donate clothes on the spot then run in their underwear. Seems fun and charitable. Will it move product?

AXE Hair Action

Oh, boy….what can I say….surround sound experience of sexy girl running their fingers through your imaginary hair breaking into an imaginary catfightfighting over you with no video . I know I’m getting old, but do they think even horny college (or younger) kids think this is funny much less want to share this?! #fail

JenniewithAXE

Personalizing Axe through the employee of the PR firm. Um..Jennie seems sweet and all, but…what? See “Spokesperson” notes.

Each wll post by OS guy garners hundreds, sometimes thousands of “like” and hundreds of replies. Amazing level of engagement.

Jennie post interesting finds and does a good job of keeping a conversation going with a couple of cross-promotional posts, but most of the comments are fan driven quips and comments about the product and how much they LOVE it (a lot of 1-liners) or their experience at AXE events

Comment Highlights

Old Spice: Well friends, like all great things this too must end. (508 replies!)

Alex Forian: No…NOOOOOO! It can’t be, not now! I haven’t growen tierd of you yet!

Cory Lee Hill: i personaly use old spice and axe. but old spice has a more genuine smell axe is a spice for like kids who want pop unless your useing one of the amber axes or something.

Nishant Vijay: no one like AXE in the market..

Sentiment

Obviously extremely positive sentiment that is tying back to purchase intent. Comments include:

David Di Iorio: We must all go out and buy Old Spice…its the only way we can have a little bit of the Old Spice man with us everday.

Vanessa White: Nope. no no no no no Why!!!!!!! why… I’ll miss you so much. I’m going to buy some Old Spice just to smell it and think of you always. Good-By my friend. you will always be the sexyest man of my life.

Julie Turner Nelson: Ok Old Spice…Please dont take away the pretty talking ridiculously hunky guy 🙂 I guess I will have to go out and buy my husband Old Spice… until now that was the smell of my father, now it has a whole new image 🙂

There’s a good deal of positive sentiment in the posts. Mostly 1 line proclamations of their adoration for the brand. This is good, be it would be great to start a conversation as Old Spice has done.Dylan Andrew: ughh u should smell my gym locker room these idiot kids spray it EVERYWHERE and it stinks!Reply Thread:

Brett Goldsmith: same for my locker room

Jennie Averbook (note: Jennie is the official social media person for Axe): Dylan, too much of any smell is no good! AXE knows all scents are best in moderation, and created the Double Pits to Chesty move to show just how much to spray http://bit.ly/97g0Yv

First ever Brand to Brand Twitter conversation (?) @Starbucks to @oldspice You look cold. Need some coffee? Reply to Tweet >> @Gillette to @oldspcie – shameless plug, but at least they adimitted it!Brilliant to engage celebrities such as @Alyssa_Milano who retweet and even responded with a charitable challenge to which Old Spice donated $100,000!!!Brilliant to engage influential bloggers and media outlets! Ashton Kutcher was the first @oldspice tweet I saw referencing @kevinrose. Of course both retweeted.Reach from those 3 tweets alone = 7,419,952 at a CPM of $0.00!!!!

Stream seems to be about promoting product events, or personal insights. This was particularly intriguing conversation:@codyks: @AXE I use Body wash/shampoo/Deodorant/ and a spray (@tamajama really digs the spray, Dark Temptaion) Reply Thread:

My wife and the new iPhone app Siri have a lot in common – they both have great personalities, they are brilliant AND gorgeous <insert brownie points here>.

I recently attended a meeting of the local IxDA (Interaction Design Association) where they showed videos from Interaction10, this year’s conference for interaction designers. One video struck me as particularly poignent in my quest for the ultimate user experience. It was a presentation by Cindy Chastain called Thinking Like a Storyteller. Her challenge to the audience was to think about interaction design as a story that has a beginning, middle and an end and to create characters to drive that story. The system feedback is a character that interacts with the user (also a character in the story). This is the beauty of Siri – “she” has a personality that makes me feel happy.

The iPhone personal assistant app Siri is telling a story like no other on the iPhone. I’ve never experienced a more relevant app that throws away the paradigm of what we expect from the iPhone UI to create the worlds greatest user experience.

From the ease of use – click a button, say what you want and poof you have results; to the super-friendly feedback – “ok, got it. Just a second while I find that for you”. Siri has really managed to create not just a character, but a personality that is driving the story line. Powered by Nuance’s famed speech recognition, it’s accuracy is pretty amazing. But even that becomes commonplace after a few iterations. THE REAL amazing thing is how brilliant the application is.

Famed sage Robert Scoble recently wrote about it calling it “The Future of the Web”. What makes it so amazing is the integration points of web services. It doesn’t just take me to Opentable to make a reservation, it allows me to make the reservation from within the application. Want to find a PG-13 movie playing near you? NO PROBLEM! Just say “PG-13 movies near me” . Wanna tweet? Sure, say the tweet command and faster than you can say OAuth – poof – you’ve tweeted.